East Side, West Side, All Around The Town Margate-based Kosher Restaurant Has Plans For Expanding Its Operations Across The Nation.

August 26, 1985|By Kevin Gale, Business Writer

While many restaurants are scrambling for the latest trend to become popular, one Margate restaurant operation is following a concept that hails from the time of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob.

People may flock to other restaurants for the latest ethnic fad or gourmet burger, but at the East Side Kosher Restaurant, people often line up outside for food prepared under traditional rabbinical supervision.

In a case of ancient customs meeting modern business, the owners of the East Side, located at 6836 W. Atlantic Blvd., are planning to expand. A stock offering extended until Oct. 12 has already raised about $1 million -- $1.5 million is the ultimate goal -- that will be used to open a kosher commissary and several more restaurants.

Franchising, which is planned after the offering, would break new ground, said Herbert J. Bernstein, vice president and director of the company, ESKR Inc., set up to launch the new ventures.

``To our knowledge, there are no kosher franchises or franchisees in the United States,`` said Bernstein, 53, who is secretary in the current restaurant operation, S&R Foods Inc., at the 6-year-old East Side.

The restaurant has 150 seats and sales should hit $750,000 to $1 million this year, said Sandu Kroitor, the East Side`s 50-year-old head chef and a member of the family that owns most of deli.

In fiscal 1982, the restaurant had $304,000 in sales and a $107,000 gross profit. In fiscal 1983, it had $403,000 in sales and a $137,000 gross profit, according to the stock prospectus. Figures for the fiscal year ending June 30 have not been completed.

To qualify as kosher, a restaurant has to use separate sets of cookware and dishware for dairy and meat products or serve just one of the two categories, such as the East Side, which serves just meat. Animals must be slaughtered in a humane, ritual fashion, the blood drained and the meat soaked and salted. Rabbis ensure such procedures are followed.

South Floridia`s Jewish residents, especially those from the New York and Boston areas, have provided a good base for the first restaurant and should bode well for the initial expansion planned here, Bernstein said.

An American Jewish Yearbook survey performed in 1982 estimated there were 80,000 Jews in the Fort Lauderdale area, 15,000 in Boca Raton/Delray Beach and 55,000 in the Hollywood area, he said.

The company is negotiating for a commissary site in Fort Lauderdale along Commercial Boulevard that could provide food for grocery stores, nursing homes, meals delivered to the elderly, airlines, cruise lines, catering and the company`s restaurants, Bernstein said.

ESKR (an abbreviation of East Side Kosher Restaurant) is negotiating for a site in Lake Worth for a second company-owned restaurant and would likely consider Hallandale for the third, he said.

``We now get customers as far away as West Palm Beach and Miami,`` said Kroitor. Many of those customers return several times a week.

While Dade County has a variety of kosher restaurants, Broward County has only three others besides the East Side, according to Avron Drazin, a county consumer affairs analyst who makes sure that products billed as kosher really are.

The next targets for ESKR`s expansion will be Orlando, Atlanta, Houston, Dallas, Denver and Las Vegas, a prospectus for the stock offering states.

Kroitor had planned to retire when he came to South Florida, but his son, Arnold, 26, saw a kosher restaurant for sale while vacationing here. Although the elder Kroitor rejected that venture, a newspaper ad for the already kosher East Side New York restaurant caught their attention and the Kroitors began operations there on June 12, 1979.

Kroitor said he already had the idea for the commissary from his experiences with Frankel`s Kosher Kitchen in Far Rockwaway, N.Y., where he was chef from 1958 to 1981 and owner from 1969 to 1981.

``We were approached several times about it,`` he said. ``We used to sell to JASA, the Jewish Association of Service for the Aged.``

The idea for widespread franchises was sparked in Margate a few years later when ``a customer came in and bought a lot of stuff for his son in Texas,`` Kroitor said. ``He said there was nothing out there (offering kosher food.) He said he would not mind investing`` in a venture that would provide it.

Bernstein said, ``We started looking around and found a lot of potential.``

There`s so much potential, said Rabbi David Gordon, 69, an ESKR director, that many Jewish people avoid traveling because there`s difficulty finding kosher food.

``When you travel all over the United States, like I do, the first thing you look for is a kosher restaurant,`` he said.